Rafter

If you’re a fan of brain teasers and puzzle games then you’re surely love Rafter.  Rafter is a problem solving game application where you create wooden blocks and stone balls with the purpose of navigating them around head scratching obstacles in order to strike and detonate a red mine.  You can create wooden blocks and stone balls of any size.  The game is part strategy and part trial and error.  You have a limited number of attempts in each level.  The fewer number of attempts it takes you to complete a level, the more points you earn.

Rafter, created  by Emantras Inc. (AKA – Punflay), looks deceptively plain in pictures, but once you see the app live in person you realize how great the graphics, animation/physics, and game-play really are.  I loved Rafter within just the first couple of minutes I played it.  It makes great use of the iPhone and iPod Touch multi-touch technology and requires you to tap into your creative side to come up with solutions.  As you advance in the game there are handful of levels that at first glance will make you scratch your head.  You’ll be greeted with vast open space, spring-like and falling platforms, rotating windmills, swinging gauntlets, block redirecting fans, and maze-like structures.  I myself moved along pretty well until I hit level 13.  From that point forward there were a couple obstacles that took me several tries to figure out.  Luckily Rafter let’s you retry levels as many times as you want so no matter how perplexed you might be, eventually you’ll figure it out.

List of Key Features:

• Draw your own custom rectangle and circle shapes
• Realistic physics
• OpenFeint global scoring
• 21 challenging levels

All in all I was very impressed with Rafter.  I reviewed version 1.0, which to me is a very well done app with one exception; it was too short!  The game is so addictive that I played it straight through to the end.  Unfortunately, I was able to complete all 21 levels in about 20 minutes.  So the plus side is that the game is entertaining and fun, the downside is that it’ll leave you wanting more.  Luckily the developer is hard at work on 10 more levels.  I’m hoping they’ll continue to crank out even more than that.  Rafter is a very addictive game, I’m positive that fans of puzzle and problem solving apps will love it.  The only thing holding this game back from a higher rating is more levels.  If it had 50 levels or so it’d definitely garner a top rating.  Definitely go checkout Rafter.

Version Reviewed: 1.1

Requirements: iPhone or iPod Touch; iPhone OS 3.1 or later

Review Update

02/25/2010 – Rafter version 1.2 included an update that added 20 more levels to this game.  Now Rafter has 41 levels!  Because of this update we’ve modified our original 3/5 rating to a 4/5 rating.  Also in the works is an update that will allow users to create your own custom levels.  Very cool!

Posted by Ryan Johnson
on Jan 29, 2010
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